Ways to spend £10 million #23

Old enmities are set aside for the day

AspirationNation: Work Hard and Die

One of these is from a real Conservatives leaflet published in the wake of yesterday’s budget, I kid you not (guess which one)

36DD-Day

2nd edition of today’s historic currant bun

Keeping Track

This is the best thing I did at work today, 3rd August, the day the track and field started in the Olympic Stadium in East London – and the day when Jesse Owens won the first of his four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. I managed to get him on the home page of the London 2012 website (where I’m working as a Gamesmaker volunteer).

Jesse comes home – 76 years on to the day

Meanwhile, I’ve just taken out two books my grandfather fled from Germany with in 1938. On the fly-leaf is the writing of his sister Else who was killed by the Nazis in 1943 (it was a Christmas present from her in December 1936). The publishers of this record of the XI Olympiad couldn’t write Jesse out of the history but they do their best to undermine his achievements with the racist cartoon below his photograph. But he’s the one we remember and honour.

in memoriam Else Gewurtz

in memoriam Jesse Owens

Venceremos

From The Independent today…

France and Spain back down on fish discards after internet campaign

MARTIN HICKMAN    MONDAY 19 MARCH 2012

France and Spain today backed down over a plan to carry on throwing dead fish overboard after an internet campaign organised by a television chef.

Prior to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s social networking campaign, the two countries had been hoping to persuade fellow fisheries ministers to sign a declaration opposing a ban on discards, when trawlers exceeding their allowable catch throw back fish into the sea dead.

More than 130,000 Twitter and Facebook messages were sent to ministers urging them to oppose the draft declaration and France and Spain did not insist on a vote. Britain’s fisheries minister Richard Benyon went into the meeting saying he would oppose France and Spain. The EU fisheries commissioner Maria Damanaki now looks likely to phase out discards over four years, by reforming the Common Fisheries Policy in a way that ultimately kills fewer fish.

Last night Fearnley-Whittingstall told supporters: “I’m coming back on the Eurostar and it’s been a satisfying day. Discard disaster has been averted as the French, Spanish, Portguese and Belgian revolution just didn’t happen. Maria Damanaki led from the front and seems to be building consensus among the ministers. Everyone agreed that the amazing Twitter and Facebook activity over the weekend made a real difference.”

***

136,000 tweets were published between Saturday and when the EU Fisheries Ministers gathered in Brussels on Monday morning, addressed directly to each Minister in his/her own language.

To top off a moment of victory, this evening Hugh’s Fish Fight won the RTS Award for Best Popular Factual Programme, the citation [below] highlighting the importance of the multiplatform element. Hugh was delighted and is raring to move on with the follow-up series this year which will cover events like yesterday in Brussels.

“An interesting, watchable and accessible series of clever and effortless campaigning. The presenter is an amazing advocate, demonstrates admirable tenacity and gains unbelievable access. The series is also distinctive in terms of online innovation and activity.”

This is the second time this year a resolutely TV-centric awards has picked up on the multiplatform dimension of Fishfight, indicating the increasingly mainstream character of Multiplatform. Last month Fishfight won the Best Popular Factual Programme category of the Broadcast Awards, run by the industry’s tradepaper. The citation included:

“A passionate, uncompromising programme that made a potentially dull subject fascinating – and with superb use of multiplatform.”

Tipping the hat to Hugh’s previous campaign, Chicken Out, I conclude with a traditional little joke: Why did the Belgian chicken cross the road?

(Because there’s fuck all else to do in Brussels.) Not like the London chicken then.

{Article reproduced courtesy of The Independent.}

The Great British Property Scandal

So here’s what it’s all about:

After just over 24 hours more than 52,000 have joined the campaign

Our Intrepid Leader (George 'Homeboy' Clarke)

It’s been a pretty tough project but that backing plus the following have made it worth the blood, sweat and tears: before the season even started transmitting this multiplatform commission prompted a debate about the senseless waste of empty homes in the House of Commons. I’m just back from an event in Parliament with George Clarke fronting our C4 delegation to rally more MPs behind the initiative, including the committed Lib-Dem Andrew Stunell and the shadow minister for Housing Jack Dromey.

George with The Great British Property Scandal literally on his mind

Here’s the extract from Hansard:

29 Nov 2011:

Empty Homes

Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con): It is an honour to have secured this Adjournment debate on empty homes. It is an issue that I and many Members on both sides of the Chamber have raised in recent weeks and months. Indeed, only last week, three Members asked about empty homes during the ministerial statement on housing.

…

I became involved in the issue of empty homes because of my deep concern about overdevelopment in my Colne Valley constituency in west Yorkshire. It is home to the lovely towns of Slaithwaite, Marsden, Holmfirth, Honley, the Huddersfield suburbs of Lindley and Birchencliffe and many more beautiful areas. I was concerned that our beautiful Pennine countryside was set to be dug up for new identikit homes.

The idea of green fields being developed is bad enough, but it defies all logic to be doing it while thousands of existing empty properties are being left to rot. In fact, my local council, Kirklees, has just voted for a local development framework that will impose 22,470 new homes in the district over the next 15 years, with some going on green belt. I say, bring Britain’s empty homes back into use first.

There is a groundswell of support for the empty homes campaign. I have to admit that I am a big fan of Channel 4 shows such as “Grand Designs” and “Restoration Man”. The presenter of the latter show, George Clarke, will be telling the nation about the scandal of Britain’s empty homes in a forthcoming series on Channel 4 next Monday and Tuesday evening—that is the plug out of the way.

…

What is an empty home? Homes are left empty for a number of reasons—for example, when they are between tenants, being refurbished, in probate or when the owner is in care or hospital. For the purposes of this campaign and this debate, however, we are primarily talking about long-term empty homes. These are properties that are stuck empty, and I believe that getting those houses back into use could be a quick and relatively inexpensive way of providing more housing.

7.17 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell): Like my hon. Friend, I have been in contact with George Clarke and Channel 4, and I am happy to add a second endorsement of the programme on empty homes that they are developing. He, I and they are appalled at the scandal that 250,000 properties [see how the Government manage to make 100,000 disappear - just like that?] are empty when millions of people are on waiting lists, anxiously looking for homes and unable to find them. As well as being eyesores and as well as easily falling into disrepair, empty homes are often an expensive menace to communities and public services, attracting antisocial behaviour, squatting and vandalism.

The Government know very well that we need to build more homes, more quickly, and the housing strategy statement made in the House by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government last Monday shows real earnest intent. At the same time, we have to make better use of our existing homes, as that is better for communities, for the environment and for the families who have the new home to live in. We have been working on ways to bring empty homes back into use, and tackling those homes is one of the key pledges that we made in the housing strategy.

Add your name to the campaign to fill Britain’s empty homes here

Here’s the season trail:

Update 8/12/11:

It’s Thursday night now, 72 hours on, and we have over 91,000 signed-up supporters on the site. Way beyond my expectations. 100,000 is a key number as that enables a parliamentary debate to be triggered. Turn, little counter, turn.

Bitter Crop

The night before last the New York jazz club of the 30s and 40s Cafe Society was recreated in London at the Purcell Room on the South Bank for one night only. The club was set up in 1938 as an alternative to the largely segregated, mob-run nightclubs then on offer. Behind it was Barney Josephson, the New Jersey-born son of Jewish immigrants from Latvia. His declared ambition was to create ”a club where blacks and whites worked together behind the footlights and sat together out front”. His socialist tendencies are well captured in the club’s motto: The wrong place for the Right people.

Cafe Society was opened in 1938 by Billie Holiday and it was there within the year that she unleashed upon the world Strange Fruit, a song like no other. Picking up on my earlier post about great song lines, Shelter from the Storm, there is one line in this poem turned song that ranks among the all-time great song lines:

Pastoral scene of the gallant South

If you ever wanted to illustrate irony… that word “gallant” kills off a view of the Confederacy in one mighty blow. When Holiday first heard the lyrics her one question was: what does ‘pastoral’ mean? Which is ironic in itself in that her whole being understood what Strange Fruit meant which is why she made the song so much her own.

With the same irony that has Danny Boy being composed by an English lawyer, it was actually written by a white man, a Jewish school teacher called Abel Meeropol – pen name Lewis Allan, after two children he lost in their infancy. Meeropol’s motivation was simple: “I wrote Strange Fruit because I hate lynching and I hate injustice and I hate the people who perpetuate it.”

Here’s the poem he brought to Holiday and Josephson at Cafe Society, already set to music, already performed in obscure left-wing circles, ripe for the magic of a singer who could perform it from her soul and evolve it into something uniquely powerful.

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,

And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Holiday delivered this body blow to audiences throughout her career – here’s one later take on it (the instability of the picture seems to suit the song, as if it can’t fully be retained by the technology):

 

Update 19.xi.11

Barney Josephson didn’t seem to have his own Wikipedia entry so I’ve just made him one

Interactive media cuts crime

Two years is a long time in interactive media – time enough for this commission of mine, Landshare, from Keo and Mint Digital to show its true value as highlighted in the Telegraph:

Crime

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s allotment halves anti-social behaviour

Hugh Fearnley-Whittinghstall, the River Cottage chef, has halved anti-social behaviour on a housing estate with an allotment scheme.

7:00AM BST 11 Aug 2011

The television chef launched the Landshare initiative, encouraging communities to plant food on unused plots.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

The scheme’s first project in Leigh, Wigan, has cut anti-social behaviour by 51 per cent, local police said.

“This has been a wonderful project that gives children something positive, healthy and educational to do,” said PCSO Wendy Walters. “The allotment has undoubtedly contributed to a staggering 51 per cent reduction in antisocial behaviour on the estate in the last year.”

“The estate has seen a great improvement in antisocial behaviour since the allotment started,” said one resident. “The site gives children somewhere to go and something to do.”

The Landshare scheme, backed by Channel 4, matches people in need of land and those wanting to help with growing with people offering unused plots. It also offers advice to novice gardeners. It has been used by more than 55,000 people since its launch by Fearnley-Whittingstall in 2009.

{Reproduced courtesy of The Telegraph}

Enemy of Carlotta: Coleman Balls

Enemy of Carlotta #127

Coleman faces new row over his taxi expenses

Wednesday, 18 May 2011 {courtesy of Barnet & Whetstone Press}

By Mary McConnell

Even Boris is ashamed of this pussy

Controversial councillor Brian Coleman has been blasted after he claimed £3,480 in expenses for taxis last year – including £140 to take his mother to a formal event.

Mr Coleman, Barnet Council’s cabinet member for the environment, made the claims for journeys carried out in his role as chairman of the London Fire And Emergency Planning Authority, which runs the London Fire Brigade.

In September last year Mr Coleman claimed £140.55 for the cost of two taxis that took his mother to memorial services for firefighters at St Paul’s Cathedral and at St Bartholomew The Great Church in east London.

The £3,480.20 expenses clocked up by Mr Coleman last year dwarfed the claims made by his LFEPA colleagues.

Deputy leader Maurice Heaster, who claimed £1,156.22, was the only other member to claim more than £1,000 in expenses, while 11 members did not claim any expenses at all.

Mr Coleman has been in the firing line over his expenses before. In 2008 he lodged a claim of more than £8,000, which earned him the nickname “Grab-a-cab Coleman”.

Vicky Morris, from Barnet Alliance For Public Services, told The Press: “The bill is not as big as in 2008 so I suppose he has managed to get it down.

“Mr Coleman expects a level of comfort that most of us don’t demand in life.

“He is a man with expensive tastes. The problem is we have become numb to it but this serial greed will have to catch up with him at some point.

“Taxis for his mother is just taking the mickey. He just has this sense of entitlement and thinks that he is a very important man so that means he should be able to stick his mother in a taxi at taxpayers’ expense.

“He has got no sense of embarrassment about it but I think he will come a cropper in the London Assembly elections next year.”

According to a spokesman for the London Fire Brigade, members of the authority should only use taxis as a matter of urgency or when no public transport was reasonably available.

A spokeswoman for London Mayor Boris Johnson said: “The mayor is disappointed with Mr Coleman. He does not approve of his extravagant expenses and has made this clear to him.

“Only members of the London Fire And Emergency Planning Authority, however, can tighten the expenses regime relevant here. We’d encourage them to do so.”

Mr Coleman was unavailable for comment.

March

My favourite of the pictures I took on the anti-cuts march #march26The rest of the photos are here